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Your first two paragraphs seem to contradict each other. I guess I disagree with the first and agree with the second. If you're going to build a plant that req

Your first two paragraphs seem to contradict each other. I guess I disagree with the first and agree with the second. If you're going to build a plant that requires active backup cooling in a tsunami zone then you should protect your backup cooling system from tsunamis. It's ok to build nuclear fission reactors in challenging locations. We have many that run underwater and a few dozen that run in outer space. We ran one under the ice sheet of Greenland and one in Antarctica. As you say, you just gotta build the necessary infrastructure.

moloch-hai 4y ago
There have been no nuke reactors in space. (RTG does not count.) The ones in Antarctica and Greenland were notable failures.
- m4rtink 4y ago
  We don't have any currently operating nuclear reactors in space right now but there were quite a few in the past - a couple test satellites from the US and a couple dozen active radar satellites for ship hunting from the USSR: https://space.skyrocket.de/doc_sdat/us-a.htm https://space.skyrocket.de/doc_sdat/us-a.htm While none are operational right now, the highly radioactive reactors cores that didn't burn up over Canada by accident do remain a reasonably stable disposal orbit today. :-)
  - moloch-hai 4y ago
    Conceded, a few were operated by USSR. The one that crashed in Canada generated quite a fuss, for reasons. The film safe from Skylab that crashed in Australia made less.
    - m4rtink 4y ago
      Long term, we will certainly need nuclear reactors in space - possibly not necessarily in Earth/Luna space that much, but already on Mars and especially the Asteroid Belt solar panel are really becoming too heavy to provide any useful power. Thankfully reactors in space have a lot of benefits compared to terrestrial use - ships and space stations can use the so called shadow-shield to protect the ship/station in its shadow and just let the radiation go into the void of space in all other direction. Makes docking a bit tricky as well as running multiple reactors (you need to take neutron cross-propagation into account), but should be still doable. For surface or asteroid stations - there shouldby plenty of mass for any shielding and no biosphere to contaminate or possibly not even any hydrosphere or atmosphere to spread radioactive particles - on the other hand, this also makes cooling harder.
      - moloch-hai 4y ago
        Nukes in space offer myriad opportunities not practical on Earth. Lofting them directly from Earth is a tricky matter. I believe it could be done safely, but I know many never will. On Titan, all you need is a naked pile in a gore-tex sleeve with a wind turbine at the top, catching convection. Or maybe plunge it into a methane sea and drive a wind turbine from the boil-off. No need for cooling. On orbit or on an airless body, a naked pile at the end of a long boom can be allowed to heat to a fierce glow. Photovoltaics ranged around it, at a distance, produce power directly. Again, no need for cooling.
        m4rtink 4y ago
        Indeed! That's why even though renewables now do often make more sense than nuclear plants, I'm worried about all the know how and industrial base possibly being lost, as that might slow us down as we move further into space. BTW, there is a recently released grand-strategy game called Terra Invicta that gets it right - the same solar panel module that gives you 40 power units in LEO (or 260 at Mercury!) will produce just 3 power units at Ceres. So its all fission, followed by various fusion designs for any stations further from the sun than Earth/Luna & for basically all the ships. As for launching reactors into space - I think that at least the fuel elements will have to be launched for quite a while, the industrial base required for nuclear fuel refining and fuel assembly fabrication is just too massive for early deployment space-side. Lot of other stuff - dirt for shielding, coolant, possibly even some primitive radiators - could likely be made in space relatively quickly. Still, nuclear fuel that has not yet been through a reactor is just a bunch of toxic heavy metal - not ideal if it burns up, but possibly quite a bit better than plutonium from an RTG. Also being dense and quite small in volume, it could very well be shipped in a big ball of ablative shielding, just in case.
        moloch-hai 4y ago
        Loss of knowhow for terrestrial plant construction and operation doesn't worry me, because conditions and designs for uses in space are completely different. You are better off with people who are completely free of all the assumptions embodied in old designs.

moloch-hai 4y ago

There have been no nuke reactors in space. (RTG does not count.) The ones in Antarctica and Greenland were notable failures.

m4rtink 4y ago
We don't have any currently operating nuclear reactors in space right now but there were quite a few in the past - a couple test satellites from the US and a couple dozen active radar satellites for ship hunting from the USSR: https://space.skyrocket.de/doc_sdat/us-a.htm https://space.skyrocket.de/doc_sdat/us-a.htm While none are operational right now, the highly radioactive reactors cores that didn't burn up over Canada by accident do remain a reasonably stable disposal orbit today. :-)
- moloch-hai 4y ago
  Conceded, a few were operated by USSR. The one that crashed in Canada generated quite a fuss, for reasons. The film safe from Skylab that crashed in Australia made less.
  - m4rtink 4y ago
    Long term, we will certainly need nuclear reactors in space - possibly not necessarily in Earth/Luna space that much, but already on Mars and especially the Asteroid Belt solar panel are really becoming too heavy to provide any useful power. Thankfully reactors in space have a lot of benefits compared to terrestrial use - ships and space stations can use the so called shadow-shield to protect the ship/station in its shadow and just let the radiation go into the void of space in all other direction. Makes docking a bit tricky as well as running multiple reactors (you need to take neutron cross-propagation into account), but should be still doable. For surface or asteroid stations - there shouldby plenty of mass for any shielding and no biosphere to contaminate or possibly not even any hydrosphere or atmosphere to spread radioactive particles - on the other hand, this also makes cooling harder.
    - moloch-hai 4y ago
      Nukes in space offer myriad opportunities not practical on Earth. Lofting them directly from Earth is a tricky matter. I believe it could be done safely, but I know many never will. On Titan, all you need is a naked pile in a gore-tex sleeve with a wind turbine at the top, catching convection. Or maybe plunge it into a methane sea and drive a wind turbine from the boil-off. No need for cooling. On orbit or on an airless body, a naked pile at the end of a long boom can be allowed to heat to a fierce glow. Photovoltaics ranged around it, at a distance, produce power directly. Again, no need for cooling.
      - m4rtink 4y ago
        Indeed! That's why even though renewables now do often make more sense than nuclear plants, I'm worried about all the know how and industrial base possibly being lost, as that might slow us down as we move further into space. BTW, there is a recently released grand-strategy game called Terra Invicta that gets it right - the same solar panel module that gives you 40 power units in LEO (or 260 at Mercury!) will produce just 3 power units at Ceres. So its all fission, followed by various fusion designs for any stations further from the sun than Earth/Luna & for basically all the ships. As for launching reactors into space - I think that at least the fuel elements will have to be launched for quite a while, the industrial base required for nuclear fuel refining and fuel assembly fabrication is just too massive for early deployment space-side. Lot of other stuff - dirt for shielding, coolant, possibly even some primitive radiators - could likely be made in space relatively quickly. Still, nuclear fuel that has not yet been through a reactor is just a bunch of toxic heavy metal - not ideal if it burns up, but possibly quite a bit better than plutonium from an RTG. Also being dense and quite small in volume, it could very well be shipped in a big ball of ablative shielding, just in case.
        moloch-hai 4y ago
        Loss of knowhow for terrestrial plant construction and operation doesn't worry me, because conditions and designs for uses in space are completely different. You are better off with people who are completely free of all the assumptions embodied in old designs.